Design today is increasingly being recognized as creating value – whether for cultural and collective intelligence, for embedding new technology into new behaviours, for fostering or acting as a force for change in societies and for companies confronted with complex problems. This value is based on design research within a large variety of settings and scientific backgrounds.

The gestalt of the conference is “the whole is more than just the sum of its parts”. Taking this principle to heart, the conference will bring together all stakeholders in design research and design process innovation. University labs, design schools, and R&D departments from industries have been invited.

The conference is organized around 4 meta-themes divided into 26 tracks:

Excellence in design research

Methodology for design research

Epistemology of design

Design research and creativity

The future of design research and publishing in peer-reviewed journals

Design research and design education

Interdisciplinarity in the innovation process

Exploring the partnership between designer and researcher

Design research & innovation in luxury industries

Design research & arts and crafts

Design research in innovation management :emotion, Kansei engineering

Design research in innovation management : CK theory

Human factors as a source of value for innovative design

Design scenarios for innovative product and service strategies

Design research, NPD, innovation management & marketing

Interdisciplinary perspective on art, lifestyle and scalable business

Towards more human value in society

The value of design research for public policy

The value of behavioural change through design research

Research through design for prospective value

Design research in Industry R&D strategy

Design research co-creating value with the consumer

The value of humanities for Design research

The value of design research for organizations

Can design research help measure design value?

Design thinking research and new business model. Design leadership.

Design research for making things differently with more dynamic & inclusive approaches

Submissions

Abstracts

Abstracts should specify the research question, give bibliographical references, mention the research methodology, the findings and describe the objective in terms of value.

Abstracts should be less than 500 words in length. They summarize the paper, and should not provide any identifying information about the author(s).

Workshops

Some tracks will be best illustrated through a workshop experience so we welcome ideas on workshops during or before the conference.

Full Papers

All papers will be double-blind peer-reviewed.

Full papers should be between 3000–5000 words in length. We welcome any research approach or type of paper including conceptual, empirical and critical literature reviews. However, we expect high standards of scholarship within the papers in terms of establishing the theoretical context, explaining the methods of inquiry, and reporting results that may aid other researchers.

Best papers will be published in a Special issue of Design Journal.

Reviewing Process

All abstracts and papers need to be submitted via our conference management system. Abstracts will be assessed by members of the Academic Committee. If accepted, authors will be invited to submit a full paper. To submit your abstract, please follow these steps:

The conference management tool will be active starting March 31st, 2014. You will need to and to create your account.

Once logged in select ‘Your Submissions’ and then click “Submission of Abstract”. First, include all the authors and affiliations. Then, provide the abstract title and the text of your abstract (maximum 500 words).

Please select the track(s) that you wish to be considered for, and provide keywords describing your submission. You can include any comments for the Academic Committee. Then click “Proceed”.

Your abstract will be stored in the CMS and passed on to the relevant track chairs for consideration.

If successful, you will receive an email notifying you and giving you details of further steps.

If successful, you will also be also required to upload your full paper to the CMS following a similar procedure. Full details will be provided in due course.